Black crime, nonblack victims

Everyone has reason to be frightened of young black teenagers in D.C. I live near Mt. Pleasant, and a good friend of mine, who is from Gabon, and who is a husky, muscular guy with very dark skin, was mugged by a group of black teenagers.

He said he knew he should have crossed the street when he saw them coming. He was far to the left of me politically, but thought that the gun lobby was right, and that he ought to be able to carry a gun for protection. He was a peaceful guy who spoke several languages and had a Master's in International Relations from Hopkins. He's working in Darfur now.

"The skittish convenience store owner may have a statistical reason for being more nervous when a group of black or Latino male teenagers walk in, but the atmosphere of suspicion that creates for the vast majority who have no designs on the till is so toxic it's become a trope."

To say that the vast majority of black or Latino male teenagers have no designs on the till may simply be untrue when you live a city like Baltimore where 52% of the young black men were under supervision by the criminal justice system in 2005. Maybe at the moment the majority have no designs on your till, but how can you tell what they will see as an opportunity?

I have never since seen a security system like that at my brother's apartment - provided by management - when he lived in Baltimore, and I have never come into such criticism for my foolhardiness as when I walked from the Baltimore train station down the main avenue to Johns Hopkins to see my brother at two in the afternoon. I ran into no danger, only eerily deserted streets.

I have African or Carribbean friends, but not black American friends. When I lived in Montreal as a child, my best friend was our landlord's son, from Trinidad. We would talk for hours together. The day that HIS friend told him that white girls let you touch them; that his brother had a white girlfriend and let him watch, and my friend never spoke up for me, was the last day I ever spoke to him. We were nine and ten. They were a good family and a poisonous culture was taking their son young.

"Poisonous Culture": Lisa is right.

The city fathers, the parents, the citizens of Washington DC, Baltimore, etc, promote this because they allow it. And make fun of Bill Cosby and others when they speak against it.

Its a lot easier to fight an overt act than it is to get people to fight their subconscious thoughts that admittedly come from experience. We stopped racist ideas by attacking the ideas head on. The ideas we're talking about here are caused by an action, therefore the action must be stopped.

Mugging, at least large amounts of it, has always seemed to me one of those really surreal crimes. It seems like it would be easy to stop it from happening: Have the police wander around in nice clothes, wait for them to be mugged, have the whole force swoop in.

It's the same thing with streets that cops supposedly can't walk down without risking their lives. Um, duh. The way to solve that is to have the cops walk up and down it until someone threatens or shoots them, and then arrest that person.

At some point we need to admit to ourselves that the reason most public crimes happen is that we don't care enough to stop them. That we have, for whatever reason, decided to allow parts of our country to become lawless areas.

We can't stop people from poisoning their wife for the insurance. We can't stop a drug dealer from shooting another drug dealer. We can't stop a bookie from beating a client. There's a lot of private circumstances for crime that we can't stop. Even stuff in public we can't stop most of it.

But we can trivially get rid of 'dangerous' streets by making one out of ten an undercover cop until we've arrested everyone who's committing crimes. (And then move to the next street.)

Someone's about to say we don't have that many undercover cops. Well, no, but we don't really need trained undercover cops. Grab some cops from different precincts, have them dress in civilian clothes, and walk down the street carrying a 'dead man' transmitter that they release if attacked, and ask them to be belligerent to anyone who confronts them. That's it.

This isn't rocket science, people. If the street is unsafe, wander around until they attack you and then arrest their asses. We're just not willing to do that.

The first three times I was mugged was by white boys in my own town. These same boys were known for "hunting ni##ers" around the public transit hub on our border with Philadelphia. One need not guess how many black kids were in my high school class of 1974: three. I had 909 classmates in total.

The last time I was mugged, I was 16. It happened on the east edge of Central Park around 75th St. It was the only time I wasn't mugged by white kids. They were all Hispanics.

I've been assaulted a few times since then, but you can't call it a mugging when the mugger is the worse for wear.

My point... not sure I have a point, except perhaps that our culture is so stupidly stuck on "identity" that it can't get its collective head out of its arse and actually see the causes of these behaviors. Poisonous culture is a good start, well put by Lisa above. Just don't stop there.

President Lightworker - that's very good.

I understand the need as a journalist/pundit/writer to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the scarlet R but let's be realistic; even if you can't.

Most suburbanites choose their region very carefully and know precisely what they're avoiding by electing to live in that zip code. You think I want my wife driving/walking through "diverse" neighborhoods with people that possess no ambition except to mug and escort their pit bulls?

It's so amazingly simple that only a culture drunk on PC and saturated in feel goodism can miss it.

Certain races behave and we know it; certain races won't behave and we know that too. We don't have 9 lives to exhaust on the specious idea that every human encounter will produce identical results across all races.

I am a 26 year old white woman and although I fully get what Ezra is saying, I do not feel afraid when I am in predominately black, urban neighborhoods-- at least not during the day or if I know someone in the neighborhood. I think the reason I feel little fear although I am young, white, and a female (3 "strikes" against me) is because I know these people. I know better than to think a repulsive comment such as "You think I want my [insert relative title] driving/walking through "diverse" neighborhoods with people that possess no ambition except to mug and escort their pit bulls?" Have you ever met anyone who lives in these neighborhoods? Yes there are SOME people who mug and mame and murder, and yes, statistically they are minorities. However, by that standard they have a reason to hate "us" too because there are some people who drive hummers and watch flat screen TV's and live in McMansions while their Mamma worked two jobs trying to keep food on the table after Daddy left, and most of those people-- are white! If I were them, I'd hate me too...

What a repulsive comment. Shame on you.

Dude, it's called sarcasm. You are quite familiar with it.

The point I was trying to make is that uttering uncomfortable observations about "the African-American Community" has had people we know to be level-headed and well-intentioned (you) in real trouble. Like it or not, a by-product of planes slamming into buildings was to allow everyone to step back and look at Big Pictures and not fixate on violations of PC absurdities.

Alas, it was temporary. The impending election of you know who, though, shows that we as a nation are desperate to get back to the psychological mindset of September 10th.

Dude, it's called sarcasm. You are quite familiar with it. The point I was trying to make is that uttering uncomfortable observations about "the African-American Community" has had people we know to be level-headed and well-intentioned (you) in real trouble. Like it or not, a by-product of planes slamming into buildings was to allow everyone to step back and look at Big Pictures and not fixate on violations of PC absurdities.

OK, I see your point. I thought you were saying that I enjoyed the deaths of 3,000 people, because it got Sharpton off my back.

In the interim between the Sharpton hysteria and 9/11, when I had to hide out in my apartment because of actual death threats from the Sharpton-stoked black mob, Katha Pollitt, the Nation writer with whom I agree on exactly nothing, wrote a piece taking after Sharpton because of his behavior in this matter. As I recall, the point of her piece was that it'll be a fine day when the likes of Al Sharpton get as angry over crime, illiteracy, fatherlessness and other scourges within the black community, as they got at me for saying that the lavish funeral of a black pop star was over the top.

Yeah, that'll happen -- as soon as the radical imams overseas start worrying more about self-inflicted suffering in their own communities, instead of meaningless provocations like Danish cartoons. These leaders draw their own power from the suffering of their people -- from channeling the frustration of the people over their condition toward a scapegoat. Of course, nobody forces anybody else to follow Sharpton, or a radical imam, or David Duke, or any charlatan like that. But there is something about human nature...

As I recall, the point of her piece was that it'll be a fine day when the likes of Al Sharpton get as angry over crime, illiteracy, fatherlessness and other scourges within the black community, as they got at me for saying that the lavish funeral of a black pop star was over the top.

And one of these days you'll understand that 99% of black folks in this country don't give a damn about Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, or whatever black bogeyman is being trotted out on cable shout fests for your amusement/outrage.

What exactly do you think 100 Black Men, Inc. does?

Here is a list of other black organizations who very likely don't give a crap about Al Sharpton either:

Center For Urban Families
Opening Eyes, Minds
Gateway To Leadership Internship Program
Black Executive Exchange Program
Urban League of Rochester Salutes, Helps Black Scholars
Black And Missing, Inc
Project Alpha
Hampton Roads Committee of 200+ Men
Carver House
Future Black Men of America, Inc
Boys to Men
ad infinitum...

How is it exactly that you fully understand media manipulation, hype, and blather on almost any other subject, but trot out some preacher made famous for being famous and he surely must be speaking for me.

Katha Pollitt, the Nation writer with whom I agree on exactly nothing, wrote a piece taking after Sharpton because of his behavior in this matter.

What an utter non-surprise that a progressive writer called Sharpton out for being a jerk.

Well you didn't ask if I like their company either Richard so who's making assumptions now?

And "uppity" is not the problem I'm describing if you re-read my post. A knife or bullet in the gut is orders of magnitude more probable in some communities than others.

I prefer to avoid the company of the Russian mob and Gotti's extended family. Feel better?

Well, my first thought was "Good grief, Rod is going for some kind of rightwing Trifecta Box o' Posts this week! You got your Death of Europe, you got your Jesse Jackson Redux, you got your ZOMG Female Priestessesesss . . . and a couple of longshots like Drugs And Demons . . . and now we're going add that stalwart money-winner, Black People Ruin Everything." So I was planning to stay away from the track today.

But my second thought was, welcome to my world, guys. Because I wondered why you're focusing on skin color to such an extent that you're overlooking the single most obvious indicator of potential criminality: maleness. If you don't want to be the victim of violence, stay away from men. Especially if you're a woman. Personally, I think it would be great if men could be forced to live in crumbling inner city neighborhoods, so I could enjoy a suburb full of women--of all and every color--where I could walk around at night without fear, sit peacefully on public transportation, and not look over my shoulder in the parking lot. If I get off the train in the dark of night, I can assure you that I don't need to see the skin color on the guy who is standing between me and my car to feel fear. All I need to know is that he's male.

Sounds crazy? Makes you feel uncomfortable and mad? But my blanket suspicion is based on experiences every bit as convincing as your anecdotes. Go ahead . . . try to come up with one reason why you, as a male, should be exempt from prejudice that doesn't apply equally well to people of color.

Richard Bottoms: And one of these days you'll understand that 99% of black folks in this country don't give a damn about Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, or whatever black bogeyman is being trotted out on cable shout fests for your amusement/outrage.

99%? I strongly doubt that. And even if they don't care about Al Sharpton, they believe the same pathological lies.

first-- sigaliris -- you make me laugh and really you make a good point. i too have had multiple crimes committed against me by males and it hasn't mattered if they were white, black, or hispanic. Your hyperbole is apt.

Second-- I see where some of you have misunderstood me. In fact, I even thought about going back and saying "I'm not excusing the crimes committed in those neighborhoods". And no, I do not have any self hate. You're right, I don't live in a more dangerous neighborhood and I don't go at night very often (although I have done so).

I was arguing against the statement that they all want to mug you and aspire to nothing outside of that. it's simply not true! I was also arguing against the idea that this is a race thing instead of a social-economic status thing. There are crimes in all SES levels, but yes, poor people, out of their ignorance and desperation tend to commit more violent crimes. and yes, black people tend to be the majority of the poor people.

But that does not mean black people are violent beasts who aspire to nothing and white people are hard working beacons of light and aspiration. Some rich people oppress poor people and some poor people attack rich people. Some white people assume (because of statistics) that most black people are poor, ignorant, and violent (that's racism). And some black people assume (because of those same statistics) that white people are selfish, arrogant, oppressive, racists (again racism).

I do not excuse violent crimes and I do not excuse crimes of oppression, neglect, and extortion.

Sigarilis beat me to it. I guess the feeling white folks have when they see these young black teenagers wearing their baggy clothes and doo-rags and what not is the same feeling I have as a woman when I find myself in an empty parking lot and there's a suspicious-looking man there too.

Women have a legitimate reason to be on their guard around men, just as whites I believe have a legit reason to be on their guard around these young black boys. It's not racist. It's a rational response based on reality. Black males commit a disproportionate amount of crime.

The difference is though, the woman who is suspicious of a strange man does not believe that all men are out to rape her. In her personal life she has had close relationships with men who are not a physical threat to her: fathers, husbands, boyfriends, friends, dormmates, colleagues, brothers, neighbors etc.

The reverse is not true when it comes to race relations. The white person who is scared of the average black guy on the sidewalk may not have had any relationships with black people. So their fear becomes more of a fear of an entire race since it's not balanced by any personal knowledge of real-life black people who aren't thugs, rapists, robbers etc.

This is damaging because decent black boys and men take the brunt of these perceptions. Off the top of my head, in my own family, both my brothers and my father, and my brother-in-law, have all been randomly stopped by police while driving on different and numerous occasions. My dad was in Brooks Brothers buying an anniversary gift for my mother once and he was stopped and questioned by the security guard for shoplifting. He was wearing a suit and tie at the time. My brother was once held by police in Times Square because he ostensibly matched the description of a teenager who had just robbed somebody. The white cop who held him let him go when his black partner came and took one look at my brother -- an obvious prep school kid with a private school accent -- and said "this isn't the kid."

I won't even go into the number of times they have had people click all their car doors shut when they've walked by. That happened to me too once in Cambridge MA, and I'm a 120-pound woman. We sit around and laugh about this type of thing at family gatherings sometimes, because we've all had this type of thing happen to us.

I wonder how many white males of similar socio-economic background (college-educated professionals) have had the same experiences, and to the same extent.

There's really no "solution" to this "problem." Distrust and fear of the other is in all of our hearts to some degree whether we admit it or not.I think the thing really is just to remember that while certain groups may display certain characteristics for whatever reason, we must always keep in the forefront of our minds the realization that individuals are not defined by their group identity. It is a constant spiritual endeavor.

I would like the white people I meet to not automatically assume I'm dishonest or lazy, just as I'm sure the white folks I encounter would not like for me to automatically assume that they are racist.

bd_rucker, you said:

"The reverse is not true when it comes to race relations. The white person who is scared of the average black guy on the sidewalk may not have had any relationships with black people. So their fear becomes more of a fear of an entire race since it's not balanced by any personal knowledge of real-life black people who aren't thugs, rapists, robbers etc."

With due respect, I disagree strongly. My priest is black, I have many black co-workers, I've dated black men, and I still cringe, inwardly, when a group of black teenagers gets on the metro, yelling and using language that would get them arrested if police still arrested people for cussing in public.

This is cultural, not racial, IMO> But, of course the problem is so intertwined with race that it is easy to confuse it with a racial problem.

bd_rucker, your post is the most spot-on and coherent summary of the reality of our racial atmosphere I've seen. Your concluding statement should be on every billboard in every urban center.

Rod, one rebuttal to your response to Sig is my first post on this thread. She and I live in pretty much the same cultural, socio-economic place.

But really, the thing I want to criticize here is the "I don't see that where I live!" or its flipside "I see this all the time where I live!" method of argument. Can we see that both sides are valid within the context of the writer? Can we also see that the disconnect of experiences not shared or in common is simply the fact that those two people don't have those exeriences in common?

That a conclusion is arguable is not cause to distrust the premise and its supporting evidence.

In other words, the police stopped caring about the neighborhood.

Yeah, right. A young Rod Dreher, say, would have mugged someone in his neighborhood, but he didn't dare because the police still cared.

Go ahead . . . try to come up with one reason why you, as a male, should be exempt from prejudice that doesn't apply equally well to people of color.

We shouldn't be, which is why if I'm in a situation like the ones you describe, I do what I can to signal that I'm no danger. I know women are nervous and understandably so. What many of the posters here are saying is that you should extend that logic to them, because the fact is, there is no male-free environment. In any such place, all you would do is sit peaceably on a subway, because the subway wouldn't be going anywhere without men to run and maintain it. However, we can still find areas where we can live with lower levels of crime, and what crime there is in those areas we can crack down on without a pack of racial demagogues and their liberal enablers hamstringing us (and this David_TC is why cops have often given up on certain neighborhoods). And we'll continue to do that, even if we have to pay $12/gal for gasoline.

Meh. Rod, you think you're disproving something, but you're merely restating the problem in rather obvious terms. You need to reread some of your own commenters.

Jim P, for instance: Certain races behave and we know it; certain races won't behave and we know that too. Anything about distinguishing features other than race there? Any reference to dressing "like a gangsta"? No.

Alicia: We are raising a generation of young African-American sociopaths. No distinguishing features there, either.

Lisa: The day that HIS friend told him that white girls let you touch them; that his brother had a white girlfriend and let him watch, and my friend never spoke up for me, was the last day I ever spoke to him. The funny thing about this is that all you have to do is take out the word "white," and this is the kind of conversation boys have all the time. When it's a black kid, this apparently signifies a whole culture with a pathological attitude toward sex and girls. When it's a white kid . . . well, either it's just "boys will be boys" or else the white kid is an exception that we can ignore. He certainly doesn't prove that white male culture is sick. Right?

Re threat level of differently dressed men, I'm at a loss. Why don't you tell me how your Sartorio-Criminal Rating Scale works, and then I'll try to fit them into that matrix. If this thread were really about "what kind of clothing is scary enough to make me cross the street," it wouldn't be the hotbutton topic that it is.

It'll be an interesting discussion when you have a topic titled "Male Crime and Nonmale Victims."

Sarah said:
...and yes, black people tend to be the majority of the poor people.

Nope. The majority of people living below the poverty line in this country are still white. See here:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/poverty.html

But I can see how you think that. Poor whites are disproportionately rural compared to poor blacks (at least outside of a handful of Southern enclaves). Since most black poverty is urban, reporters and other urbanites tend to think all poor people are black. After all, that's what they see every day. The statistical term for it is selection bias. If you spend every day around a specific group or environment then you will tend to believe it is representitive of the larger whole.

Ah. And reading further, I see that bd_rucker and rebecca have ably made the points I was trying to get at. Thank you!

Maybe she's wrong, but she's obviously not an idiot, and maybe I have something to learn from her perspective. Why, thank you, Rod. I appreciate that.

As for Derek, while I appreciate his attempts to look non-threatening, and his zeal for even-handed law enforcement, I'm not sure I'm properly thankful for the revelation that for some reason, women would not be able to keep the subways running. What about black people? Do you think they can run the subway? Where I live, most of the SEPTA conductors and drivers appear to be black. So does that mean that out in the suburbs, poor fumbling, inept white people would be unable to run their own subways? (Or do their own yard work . . . oh, wait . . . .) Sigh. Carry on. . . .

If Rod is still reading this thread, I'm curious about something. I thought Capital Hill was simply the location of the U.S. Capital. That is, I didn't realize a person could "live on Capital Hill." Is there a group of neighborhoods that are close to the Capital building which are considered "Capital Hill"?

Yes, the term "Capitol Hill" is media shorthand for "Congress," but also a neighborhood that extends beyond the physical bounds of Congress. I too was astonished to learn when I moved there in 1992 that the neighborhood Capitol Hill was not one of the safest places in America. You'd think it would be, but you'd be wrong. Actually, I hear it's much safer now than it was back then.

I'd wager that for most Americans of whatever ethnic background, racism is something Other People are guilty of, not Us.

This is an interesting point, but I think it needs to be expanded upon.

I believe the primary intellectual issue behind racsim/discrimination/stereotyping is that, at least for most people, we would like to reach a point where our assessment of others is a best-guess at the "content of their character." The question is: how do we assess? What is the basic human decision making process?

In a risk-management context, racial profiling is modeled as "risk aversion." Indeed, the topic we are talking about (crime in D.C., race, and racism) is inherently a risk-management issue. Folks in D.C. must be overly averse to certain situations, locations, and people due to the increased likelihood of criminal activity in their daily lives.

Ta-Nehisi Coates' post on the "easy mark" was venture in risk modeling. He's trying to simulate how a person with a different "risk profile" should act (or better yet, decide) given a hypothetical situation. It's not so much an introspective journey into the foundations of racism, but it is an estimated view of how different people might respond to different situations analytically.

This type of thought process is hard wired into our brains for survival purposes. We are biologically perceptive, sensitive beings. We process billions of sensory signals which persuade our actions, thoughts, and emotions every day. We develop certain thought patterns to protect us from harm based of our perceptions. For people living in D.C., racial profiling may be a result of living in a city with a large multi-racial population that has had a ridiculously high crime rate for some time.

In other words....go up to a cat with a fog horn, and blow the fog horn in its ear. Watch what the kitty does. Wait a few hours, maybe a day or so, and go up to the cat with the fog hour again. If it isn't brain dead from the last time you blew that thing in its ear...it most likely will bolt for the nearest thing in your house that resembles a protective shelter before you even toot the horn.

Is that because the cat is "racist" against fog horns (or dogs, or mean people)? No...it's a sensory being that had a frightening experience and learned from it.

We do this exact same thing. Our process is more subtle and thoughtful, but in the end, we are all just analyzing risk trying to make it through the day. I think this explains us perceiving racism as something Other People are guilty of, not Us.

I have a question...

I'm a big guy, 5'10" 225#. I've noticed over the years as I've worked out and gotten bigger, more often people who don't know me tense up around me. I like what Derek said a lot, I go out of my way to signal that I'm non-threatening. For example, when I'm in my building elevator with a lone woman (or sometimes lone man) who doesn't know me and who backs up against the wall upon seeing me (a common occurrence), I'll say something like "good morning" or "what floor?" or "thanks for holding the door" or something to ease the tension. I'll *signal*.

What I don't understand are people who don't signal, or who signal something opposite to how they want to be treated. I've lived in NYC long enough that I trust my sense about who's possibly dangerous and who's most likely harmless. But if I rush onto a train and see a group of teens dressed like thugs, I'm not going to waste my time discerning if they're actually thugs I should move away from or just harmless teens aspiring to the latest thug aesthetic whose feelings I don't want to hurt. I'll move away, and so what if someone's feelings get hurt? Aspire to look like a thug, expect to get treated like a thug, even if you're not.

Is that wrong?

Derek Copold: (re: people with money moving away from crime-ridden areas) And we'll continue to do that, even if we have to pay $12/gal for gasoline.

I agree. $12 /gal gas is cheap, compared to the cost of a human life. This is why the McMansion won't die for awhile, either, housing crisis notwithstanding. (McMansions are often built in low-crime exurban areas with perceived "good schools.")

Then there's always the option of having no children, which puts one out of the whole commuting / housing / schooling dilemma entirely. I'm not saying it's great - but it's what people are doing as another option. If they see their choices as lying between the Scylla of horrific tuition rates in an urban private school, or the Charybdis of a sterile, boring exurb with a horrific commute, some will simply choose not to get on the boat at all.

Which is why I say that discussions of crime (*whatever* the race / ethnicity of the criminal) are intrinsically linked to "crunchy conservative" discussions.

Aspire to look like a thug, expect to get treated like a thug, even if you're not.

Is that wrong?

Nope. That's what I tell my 12-year-old, who's just entering the "random white people are going to be afraid of you" era of his life.

"...try to come up with one reason why you, as a male, should be exempt from prejudice that doesn't apply equally well to people of color."

What a strange comment! No one is entitled to be exempt from prejudice, and no one has made a claim to the contrary. You can stereotype men all you want. You can disassociate from men. The government may disagree, but you have a natural right to associate only with those whom you want to associate with.

In 53 years of being black I've never noticed that white people ever required any type of excuse before being afraid of black men. Emmet Till was lynched because he whistled at a white woman, dogs and fire hoses were used by Bull Connor out of fear.

The only time a gun was pointed at me was for being on the wrong side of town to buy comic books in Indianapolis back in 1969.

D.C. crime didn't keep me out of the Stoplight Disco in my Dress Green uniform in the winter of 1978 or make a bar owner in Fayetteville tell me "we don't serve niggers" in 1985.

Patrick Dorismond, Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, Kathryn Johnston (age 92), all shot dead. And my all time favorite:

Andre Burgess was walking down a New York street in 1997 when an undercover federal agent shot him in the thigh, saying he thought the foil-wrapped Three Musketeers candy bar in his hand was a gun.

Despite the fact that entire countries are run by narco-terrorists or rampant vicious gang activities by a rainbow of other ethnics (Yakuza, Mafia, Russkaya Mafiya, Mexican Cartels) to genocidal generals like Slobodan Milosevic, or ex-KGB thugs like Vladamir Putin; black teenagers are the only truly terrifying force around today.

What's the solution, because I can only think of two. Kill them all or devote the resources to beyond a welfare handout to fix it.

ben, can you cite a reference for your description of what happened to Emmet Till? I've never heard that before. (I'm not asking rhetorically, I'm genuinely curious.)

It wasn't a lynching. Unlike the execution of Till's father by the US Army for rape and murder as a soldier in Italy, Till's death was a private act of retribution by the woman's husband.

1. Whatever does the criminal history of Emmet Till's father have to do with this case? Even assuming that you're right about his father, are you suggesting that all the children of felons should be executed forthwith?

2. "A private act of retribution" is practically a definition of lynching. We live here, or we try to live here, under the rule of law. That means, no "private retribution," we turn all these matters over to the proper authorities, jury trials, innocent until proven guilty, all that.

God help us, ben. Maybe even I will prove to be on the wrong side of some racial divide you've erected (or maybe my dad was a bad person?) so torturing me to death is practically an act of virtue. Or something.

You might try reading what you've written before you post it.

"Whatever does the criminal history of Emmet Till's father have to do with this case? Even assuming that you're right about his father, are you suggesting that all the children of felons should be executed forthwith?"

Oh, the irony. I cited Till's father's execution (1) as an example of public retribution to be contrasted with the private retribution exacted against Bobo Till and (2) in anticipation of responses like yours to allow me point out the outrageous double standards of people like you. The only reason the story of Bobo Till is ever brought up is to tar all white folks with the guilt of Mr. Bryant and his accomplices.

Think about that.

You won't visit the sins of the father on the son, but you will vist the sins of Mr. Bryant upon 200 million strangers to him.

That's insane.

ben, what is the source of your information on the Till case? (I was the one who already asked this above.) I've always heard that Emmett either whistled at a white woman or said something along the lines of "Hey baby" to her. A little bit obnoxious, to be sure, but nothing close to deserving of "private retribution." Where did you learn that it was a sexual assault?

I'm willing to consider that the commonly accepted history of Till's murder is inaccurate only if you can cite an actual, reputable source. Otherwise you're just blowing hot air.

Concerning your further comments above, I also thought it was in poor taste to mention his father's execution. You are implying "like father (a sexual aggressor) like son." That's a non sequitur.

"Lynching" does not require a large mob. What happened to Till can indeed be considered a lynching under a general definition.

No one is "visiting the sins of Mr. Bryant upon 200 million strangers to him." The point is that the Till case demonstrates the actual situation in the South. This sort of thing happened all the time, and the public reaction to Till's murder was a milestone in the civil rights movement. No one is to blame for Mr. Bryant's actions (and those of his accomplices) except the perpetrators themselves. However, the system that allowed black people to be falsely accused for assaulting white women, and then murdered for it without any legal recourse or protection, and that allowed the murderers to get off scot free (note that blacks weren't allowed on juries, and white people refused to convict fellow whites for criminal acts against black people), is a system that we should all be distressed over. This wasn't too long ago.

"Concerning your further comments above, I also thought it was in poor taste to mention his father's execution. You are implying 'like father (a sexual aggressor) like son.' That's a non sequitur."

Again, in it's in much worse taste to mention Emmitt Till at all, and you're implying much more of a non-sequitur, as I explained above. Moreover, an implication that Till was likely to turn out like his father is not necessarily a non-sequitur, given the genetic influence on all sorts of behavioral tendencies.

"This sort of thing happened all the time...."

A total of six Blacks were lynched in the US in the 1950's (according to the Tuskegee Institute's records reported at the UMKC website), which is not exactly "all the time".

For what it's worth, if you average the number of Americans killed each year due to violent crime since the prevalence of violent crime exploded in the 1960's, the number you get will be greater than the total number of people who were ever lynched in all of American history. This observation is not meant to minimize the history of lynching, but to magnify the prevalence of violent crime in the past generation or two, which we tend to overlook or to accept as normal or inevitable in the same way that lynching was once accepted in generations past. If we don't want to be seen in retrospect in the same unflattering light in which we now see those who turned a blind eye to lynching, we ought at least to be honest about just how dire our situation really is today.

I wondered just who "ben tillman" might be, so I googled him. From Wikipedia:

During Reconstruction, he became a paramilitary fighter in the struggle to overthrow the interracial Republican coalition in the state and disempower the black majority. He was present at the Hamburg Massacre in July 1876, during which black Republican activists were murdered by Tillman's fellow "Red-shirts."

Isn't that special. Our boy "ben" probably doesn't think that was lynching, either.

He was largely responsible for calling the State constitutional convention in 1895 that disfranchised most of South Carolina's black men and required Jim Crow laws. As Tillman proudly proclaimed in 1900, "We have done our level best [to prevent blacks from voting]...we have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it."

Another quote from Tillman: We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him.

Nice hero you picked there, "ben."

It seems that, although Richard Bottoms' post has been taken down, he was correct. Racist propagandists emerge from their crannies every time a topic like this is posted.

I don't question your experience, Lisa. And I agree that on either side of the racial divide, male bonding via the betrayal of girls is poisonous. I've had similar, though not identical, experiences. I guess that where I differ with you is in my interpretation of my experiences. I don't see it as a black/white division. I think there's something amiss with the construction of masculinity across divisions of race and class. I would tentatively agree that there are pockets of more egregious and flagrant disrespect for women, but there's no reliable culture of respect for women, whether in white or black society.

The thing is, I think whites mostly have moved past the turning of the racial other into an object to be used, at least when the other is right in front of you and not an abstraction. I know there is no way I would have been silent if my friend has been ostracized or set up to be the object of use because of his race.

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_criminal_justice_system.html
"From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed over 52 percent of all murders in America. In 2006, the black arrest rate for most crimes was two to nearly three times blacks’ representation in the population. Blacks constituted 39.3 percent of all violent-crime arrests, including 56.3 percent of all robbery and 34.5 percent of all aggravated-assault arrests, and 29.4 percent of all property-crime arrests."

"Certain races behave and we know it; certain races won't behave and we know that too."

Blacks have a long way to go before they can catch up to white levels of violence, e.g., the Holocaust committed by white Germans. Of course, considering your likely political views, you probably either 1) deny that the Holocaust happened or 2) think it was wonderful.

I'm neither a Jew nor a liberal, BTW, I just think it's hilarious how quite a few people put on rose-colored glasses when they look at the glorious white race. Are blacks more likely in the U.S. to be muggers and petty street killers? Sure. Are blacks more violent/evil/corrupt by nature than whites? Hell no.

Suv, where did you get that information that women are more likely to murder their own children? Check the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, under homicide trends in the U.S. by gender. I'll post the link separately, lest it cause my post to vanish.

Some relevant statistics from the site:

Male offender/Male victim 65.3%
Male offender/Female victim 22.7%
Female offender/Male victim 9.6%
Female offender/Female victim 2.4%

If you scroll down and go to a related site regarding murder of children under 5, you see the following:

Of all children under age 5 murdered from 1976-2005 --

31% were killed by fathers
29% were killed by mothers
23% were killed by male acquaintances
7% were killed by other relatives
3% were killed by strangers
Of those children killed by someone other than their parent, 81% were killed by males.

So, how you get from that to saying that more children are killed by their mothers than by their fathers is unclear to me.

Men tend to kill random people they hardly know and women tend to kill people close to them but men tend to kill a lot more often which results in them killing more of their own kids than women do.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/wo.txt

(taken from the above)

Parents who kill

Between 1976 and 1997 parents and stepparents murdered nearly
11,000 children. Mothers and stepmothers committed about half
of these child murders. Sons and stepsons accounted for 52% of
those killed by mothers and 57% of those killed by fathers.
Mothers were responsible for a higher share of children killed
during infancy while fathers were more likely to have been
responsible for the murders of children age 8 or older.

------------------------------------------
Table 7
Murderers
Victim Female Male

Spouse 28.3% 6.8%
Ex-spouse 1.5 0.5
Child/stepchild 10.4 2.2
Other family 6.7 6.9
Boyfriend/girlfriend 14.0 3.9
Acquaintance 31.9 54.6
Stranger 7.2 25.1

Number, 1976-97 59,996 395,446

http://ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cvusst.htm

Go to the "Victims and Offenders" and download the pdf document for 2005. It PLAINLY states:

"Type of crime and race of victim" for "Rape/sexual assault" : White only - Number of single-offender victimizations - 111,490- Percieved Race of Offender - Black - 33.6%."

33.6% of 111,490 is 37,460.

Here are the numbers for black victims of rape and sexual assault:

"Type of crime and race of victim for "Rape/sexual assault" : Black only - Number of single-offender victimizations - 36,620- Percieved Race of Offender - White - 0.0% *."

and if you follow the little asterix to the bottom of the page for the footnote, it says very clearly:

"Estimate is based on about 10 or fewer sample cases."

So there you go, plain as day. According to the US Department of Justice, in the year 2005 alone black men raped at least 37,460 white women, and in the same year white men raped less than ten black women.

Therefore, statistically, over 100 white women are being raped every day by black men.